REVIEW: Boom Shankar (Matchbox 2023)

September 14, 2023

Boom Shankar is a delightfully silly and immensely creative piece, which explores and subverts ideas around love and death. The play follows Shankar Shinde, an overconfident and arrogant bomb defusal expert, and Murray Murray, an overworked but conscientious bureaucrat in heaven. Writers and performers, Bala Murali Shingade and Aman Bajaj, must be commended for creating and embodying such complex and […]

REVIEW: I Want To Be Happy (Herald Theatre)

September 8, 2023

I Want To Be Happy is a deeply human and often surreal exploration of love, loss, and the individuality of happiness. The play follows Binka, a guinea pig in a testing facility, who is wonderfully realised and commandingly portrayed by Jennifer Ludlam. Paul is the laboratory technician assigned to look after Binka, whose portrayal is a masterclass in subtlety by […]

REVIEW: Moe Miti (Red Leap Theatre)

August 30, 2023

[Dream Sleep] Moe Miti, presented by Red Leap Theatre, beautifully conjures a liminal space – not quite real, not quite unreal – and explores within it the complex relationship one has to one’s past and identity. It manages to tell a nuanced and unique story about intergenerational trauma with very little narrative. It is at once specific and universal. Director […]

REVIEW: Things That Matter (Auckland Theatre Company)

August 16, 2023

Things that Matter provides a sobering account of the alarming state of our healthcare system, fed by an unhealthy food industry and ongoing poverty that has tragically impacted marginalised communities such as South Auckland. Although based on Dr David Galler’s best-selling memoir Things That Matter: Stories of Life & Death, written three decades ago, award-winning playwright Gary Henderson adeptly brings […]

REVIEW: Losing Face (Matchbox 2023)

August 16, 2023

Nathan Joe’s latest play, Losing Face, successfully blends elements of sci-fi and holiday movies into a forceful and captivating study of the human heart. The project was originally developed under the title Flesh off the Boat as part of Playmarket’s Asian Ink Clinic in 2013 and the revisiting proves rewarding.  We meet Mark (Andrew Ford) on Christmas Eve as he […]

REVIEW: Henchmen (Basement)

August 14, 2023

Henchmen, written by Amy Wright, and directed by Mark Chayanat Whittet, is a play that takes the audience into a corporate wonderland hellscape of co-worker small-talk, ‘friendly’ upper middle management, and pretending to look busy while doing absolutely nothing. Having been highly commended by the Playwrights b425 competition, this play is an amalgamation of Megamind mixed in with the corporate […]

REVIEW: Bluebeard’s Castle (NZ Opera)

August 11, 2023

New Zealand Opera and New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s production Bluebeard’s Castle reimagines Hungarian composer Béla Bartók’s first and only opera of the same name in English and in a modern, suburban setting. Appearing in Aotearoa for a short season of just two precious performances, this courageous contemporary opera superbly manages juxtapositions of dramatic conventions old and new, in a production […]

REVIEW: Butterfly Smokescreen (The Barden Party and Jetpack Theatre)

July 31, 2023

[I’m on a Yacht] The world’s only immersive theatre experience aboard a superyacht? That’s the bold claim made in the ads for Butterfly Smokescreen, and I don’t have any reason to doubt it. The notion of creatives getting the opportunity to make an immersive, murder-mystery theatre show taking place on an actual multi-million-dollar yacht in Aotearoa seems like a pipe […]

REVIEW: Heart Go…Boom! (Massive Theatre Company)

July 30, 2023

Heart Go…Boom! is an entertaining and affecting devised piece which explores and critiques the relationships we have with ourselves, and with others.  The play consists of five performers sharing semi-autobiographical solo pieces and wider ensemble work. The stories depicted are a great mix of universal and personal – from self-service checkout woes to having a twin, or from fitting-in to […]

REVIEW: Basmati Bitch (Q Theatre)

July 15, 2023

[Dreaming of Electric Sheep] We start with a bang. There is no slow dimming of the lights, no hushed waiting in the dark. Straightaway we are launched into catastrophic news reports, chronicling the next 100 years. China and India rise to global dominance amid political turmoil and ongoing climate crisis, creating an authoritarian (though not so unfamiliar) vision of Aotearoa […]

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